


Into the Wild

by Indybaggins



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Caring Jaime, Character Study, Episode Tag, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:05:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5705305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indybaggins/pseuds/Indybaggins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Jaime has been falling for a long time now.</i> A tag to the s03e07 episode, ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Wild

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vaysh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaysh/gifts), [Flywoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flywoman/gifts).



> For Vaysh and Flywoman, thank you for giving me the encouragement needed to finally finish this one! 
> 
> Beta was by the marvellous Jie_Jie, thank you!

 

 

Jaime has been falling for a long time now. 

It’s in the hollow punch to his throat when he looks at Brienne - her pale pink dress caked with blood, her neck a gory display of ragged cuts. 

The gratitude in her earnest, ugly, windblown face. 

Jaime wants to sag in relief but somehow he can’t yet, the wild presence of the bear still lingers between them, harsh and raw. His hand grips the reins too tight. 

Qyburn asks him something but Jaime’s not listening. He only hears the gusts of wind rushing between them over the ragged cliffs as he looks back, and checks on the wench again. She’s alive. Upright in the saddle. 

Qyburn wants to know whether he was hurt, whether he overexerted himself, whether his fever is back. _Why he risked himself to save the ugliest maid in the Seven Kingdoms._ Jaime says he’s fine, even though he wouldn’t feel it if he wasn’t. 

His stump pounds in time with his heartbeat, and he saved Brienne of Tarth. 

They stop near dusk by a stream and set up camp. Jaime sees Brienne’s involuntary shudder of pain when she dismounts only because he was looking for it. 

Qyburn goes to her, and cleans the blood off her skin. He disinfects her wounds with boiling wine, stitches up her neck and arm and she sits there, unflinching. One of the men offers her clothes and she goes to change behind a bush, Jaime’s eyes following her there. 

She bundles the hideous dress up in her saddle bag, and Jaime’s sure that if he’d asked she would tell him it’s for warmth, later. Or some orphan along the way. Or some other ridiculously logical cause. 

Jaime would have burned the thing, he thinks. Torn it to shreds. 

Qyburn comes to him again but Jaime turns him away, instead watches Brienne’s broad shoulders as she hunches over a small, smoky fire. The muscles working in her back, the neat rags around her wounds. She’s chopping up some meager vegetables for soup, her fingers clumsy. She’s never cooked anything in her life before all of this, Jaime’s almost certain of it. 

She knows that he’s there. She’s slightly flustered, always too easy to read. 

Jaime doesn’t say, ‘Aren’t you glad I saved you from that bear now?’ or, ‘I liked you better in the dress, wench.’ 

When she moves he catches a wave of her sour sweat and he feels _grateful_. 

Cersei used to smell of flowers. She wore them in her hair until she decided that that looked too maidenly - she was nine. After that she put them in her bodice, jasmine flowers crushed against her budding breasts, surrounding her with the sweet smell of summer. Later, spread across her silk sheets, stuck to Jaime’s back as they rolled over and under and into each other. 

Jaime says, and his voice is hoarse, he doesn’t know why, maybe he screamed in the bear pit before, “Have you ever worn flowers, wench?” 

Brienne looks at him with a wary expression. Always so obviously distrusting. She thinks that Jaime’s making fun of her. She thinks everyone is - assumes it in every jab, every touch, every smile. She slowly says, “No.” 

Her face is pale, with dark bruises underneath her eyes. She is hurt besides the ragged cuts in her neck, Jaime can tell, bruised all over probably, a broken rib or two and he shouldn’t have left her. He never should have. 

“If I had one I’d give it to you.” 

Jaime’s aware that he’s making little sense but he reaches out with his left hand, _only hand_ , and strokes some of her hair behind her ear. “Put it there.” 

She doesn’t flinch. 

There’s mud and blood caked underneath Jaime’s fingernails - Brienne’s, maybe. He runs the blonde strands of her hair, soft and slippery, between his rough fingers and watches a dull blush creeping over her cheeks. 

It’s not enough that he can annoy her, Jaime thinks. She’s always off balance, it doesn’t take much. 

He thinks of his four-year old self running after Cersei, complaining to mother when she wouldn’t play with him. ‘Why won’t she, Mother?’ 

He doesn’t remember the answer. 

Jaime drops his hand and tries his most charming smile on Brienne, but there is something hollow underneath, and she knows it, too. 

He says, “It’s a mystery to me how you’re so good with a sword and yet so bad with a kitchen knife, wench.” But it sounds flat even to his own ears. 

She narrows her eyes at him and says, “ _Jaime._ ”

His heart is stuttering in his throat when he says, “They should have given you a real sword.” 

He doesn’t wait for her reply.

Jaime eats with the men, joking, sitting on the hard ground with their backs against a cold boulder. Brienne doesn’t join him, even though Jaime catches her looking at him several times. 

Qyburn gives him something that makes the pain recede and makes him float even more, but he doesn’t sleep yet, he can’t. Jaime stays seated against the boulder, looking at the shift and fade of the meager flames. 

Brienne comes to sit beside him when the camp is quiet. A creature of habit, that one. 

She keeps a respectable distance but somehow Jaime feels her starkly anyway. The hulk of her body is an anchor that ties him to the ground, allows him to relax the muscles that had been ready to fight anything that moved, any sound, anything at all - even now. 

She takes the sword one of the men gave her out of its sheath and put it across her knees. 

Her face is a faint spot, lighter than the darkness around it. 

The wind is ice cold. 

Eventually she speaks, a drawn-out affair with a prelude of a swallow and pursing of lips, and yet she seems to mean it anyway, “Thank you, Ser Jaime.”

Jaime nods at her, once. Even though she probably can’t see it in the dark. 

He wakes up the following morning in a fog of fever dreams, and Brienne beside him. 

Still holding the sword.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
